I just want to make sure.
Mr. Blaikie senior, in this case, the member at the time for Winnipeg—Transcona, continues on to say, and I think his particular experience is very valuable:
I had the opportunity to work on both of these committees. I wanted to reflect on the changes we have before us here, in light of the parliamentary reform process that I have seen unfold since I arrived here in 1979.
He actually worked on both of those committees, so his viewpoint as an experienced parliamentarian, as a member who has served on both of those committees, which reformed the Standing Orders not once but twice with unanimous agreement, is very valuable, and he's a New Democrat. I'm not even looking for a Conservative I can agree with. I actively looked for a New Democrat I could agree with and cite and quote.
He mentions here other members storming the chair at one point. I know that this was Harvie Andre, who was a member from Calgary, a very well-respected member, who actually did no such thing and would defend himself till the very end. I have the privilege of knowing his daughter Lauren as well, who lives in Calgary with a gentleman I worked with at the Calgary chamber, Craig Watt.
He goes on to mention other members, the types of work they've done, and how they contributed to committee reports on the McGrath committee and on the Lefebvre committee. He says here about the McGrath committee:
At the time we all agreed with the McGrath committee that delay is not necessarily a bad thing.
That goes to the argument of efficiency found in the government's document.
Delay is one of the features and functions of parliamentary democracy.
Delay is so we can consider the question put before us, either a motion or a report or private member's business. It is not a delay to debate. I have heard that mentioned by a current member of the executive, the Minister of Finance.
Delay is not a bad thing. If I have an argument with my wife and I disagree on something profoundly, or she disagrees with me, and we sleep on it, we didn't delay; we just decided to pull back, sleep on it, and then decide the next morning, as opposed to deciding in the heat of the moment and then making a bad decision.
I think the same could apply to Parliament. We're all members seeking to find that common ground among each other.
He goes on to say:
They are providing crucial political time for the public to mobilize against something which they may or may not regard as something they want to oppose.
That is exactly what we as opposition members are trying to do today, and were trying to do yesterday and the day before. We are trying to rally Canadians to demonstrate to them that we believe the motion without the proposed amendment, and the contents of “Reforming the Standing Orders of the House of Commons”, the March 2017 document that the Government of Canada posted online, are bad for the opposition. We believe they will lead to an opposition that is an audience, able to be seen but not heard. I would think that would be a great loss to this Parliament and to parliamentarians on all sides.
Now, people can disagree on the other side. I know a person who disagrees with our interpretation of what's going to happen, but the fact is that we, the opposition—I think I speak for a great deal of members—have very little trust right now for members of the executive. I don't necessarily mean members of the government caucus here at the table. What I mean is members of the executive. We have very little trust for them right now. We could rebuild that trust if we could pass this amendment, and we would like to get to that point.
I have two more things from Mr. Blaikie's contribution here during these debates. It's from April 10, 1991, on page 19293 of the House of Commons Debates.
He says:
...and the use of delay as a primary parliamentary function would not be so absolutely crucial to the role of opposition, if there was more meaningful input. But that they have not provided in this particular reform.
He's talking about the 1991 reform, when they were rushing through changes to the Standing Orders, as I feel changes to the Standing Orders are being rushed here. This is a parliamentarian of years of experience, who is saying this in 1991, who was first elected in 1979, who had served on the McGrath committee and served on the Lefebvre committee—two times they were able to reach unanimous agreement on the types of changes they wanted to see to the Standing Orders—and was a New Democrat in those years, no less.
I think that is the—
I was worried for a moment that I would not be able to continue.
I have just a few more quotes from Mr. Blaikie on the idea of parliamentary secretaries on committee. While I value their work as parliamentarians, I really don't believe they should be on committee. They can come sit in as parliamentarians, but I find it difficult to believe that they are able to separate cleanly their roles as parliamentary secretaries, meaning spokespeople on behalf of their minister and the executive, from their role as parliamentarians.
It is an incredibly difficult and fine line to walk as a parliamentary secretary, because you are there to promote, advocate, defend your minister, go to meetings, propose ideas, and work on their behalf and on behalf of the executive. You take on that role. You volunteer for that role. Nobody forced it upon you. You took on the extra duties. Just like then, in 1991, as Mr. Blaikie references, this is the excuse used by the parliamentary secretary to the House leader, who said:
It is not for control, it is for information, contact and communications, et cetera.
It's just like the argument that's used today: oh no, by no means will they direct the committee to do certain things, or direct members of the committee to vote a certain way or to propose a certain motion.
We're all working as a team on our individual teams, and we'll always be doing that. There are only so many spaces on the committee to work together. Some of the recommendations here could and should be studied, maybe to grow the membership of the committees and to include others who are unable to contribute to it, but that can't be done without the unanimous agreement that we're proposing in our amendment.
I have problems with some of the content of the motion, but I could live with it, as long as we pass this amendment. I think the study period is too short to study all the substantive changes being proposed for consideration. There's not enough detail, in some cases, to actually go through with it. I've mentioned the themes before, theme 1 and theme 2. You could break those down into separate complete studies, and you would have ample work at this committee in studying that over two or three years.
I've mentioned free votes before, so I won't repeat the points I've made on that. I won't mention that Mr. Blaikie twice rose in the House on a point of order to complain that the government was interpreting opposition day motions as matters of confidence. I would hope that we would never return to such a situation, where members of the government caucus are forced to vote a certain way on opposition day motions because they're matters of confidence. The government can name something a matter of confidence.
I think some changes that were made in 1991 and 1985, and some changes, as I mentioned, that were done by unanimous consent over the past 20 years, were at times good changes. They allowed members of the government caucus, and members of the opposition as well, to be more independent. Not everything is a matter of confidence.
Mr. Blaikie mentioned that as well in his contributions to the debate. I think it's important to reference him in particular, because he was a member of both the McGrath committee and the Lefebvre committee, so his viewpoints, because of the time he spent there, provide insight. He was a 12-year member of the House of Commons at that moment. As I mentioned before, it's from the veterans that we learn about procedures of the House.
Another member I want to mention is a former Speaker, Peter Milliken, the member for Kingston and the Islands. He was very well known and I think well liked in the House. Amongst parliamentarians he was well respected. He says here as a member, not as a Speaker, that:
This time we have had the government say in House leaders' meetings that it had changes it would like to propose to the rules; here they are; tell us what you think.
That's not what we've been asked to do. We've been directed to do it, not asked for our opinions in a general sense. We haven't been asked to cobble together the original motion. That's why we're trying to get in our say through this amendment.
He continues:
I submit that it is contrary to the past practice of this House. It has denied the opportunity for public input on the changes that are being proposed which fundamentally affect the way this House operates. This House is, after all, the public forum of this country where citizens have the right to express their views through their representatives and, on occasion directly, in the committees.
I think this is a profound statement by a parliamentarian who later became Speaker of the House, adjudicating the Standing Orders. There may be members here who know Mr. Milliken better than I do. This may just be apocryphal, but I was told that he did his studies on the Standing Orders and on question period. He read the Standing Orders before he became a parliamentarian, so he understood them in a way that many of us are learning to understand them and appreciate them.
In another section that I want to reference here, he quotes someone else:
Mr. Andre says the opposition's planned fight against the rule changes is just for the sake of appearances, since the three party leaders have been actively negotiating the changes since December.
The House leadership was trying to negotiate a solution to the impasse. Our House leadership has been trying to do the same, I understand, trying to find common ground and increase trust so that we can find some type of agreement. That's why we spend meetings trying to reach that agreement among ourselves, which we've so far failed to reach.
Don't consider our continuation of this debate, my continuation of this debate, as being solely to obstruct you. I want to make some points. I hope I've kept my repetition to a minimum. I've introduced into the discussion new material—articles, ideas, past debates, the opinions and judgments of parliamentarians with decades of experience. I think they're valuable for this exercise and this consideration because they're germane to the discussion. We're talking about changing the rules of how we work.
Mr. Milliken went on to say, with regard to the government House leader, that:
I presume he meant by that that just because you have been negotiating means you somehow agree.
Just because we negotiate, it doesn't mean we agree with the intent of all this, which is to drastically change the Standing Orders of the House and we how we do our business. I know that members have said that it doesn't necessarily mean that. Well, we have no way of knowing that, because we weren't party to the original discussion on the motion. That's why we're proposing this amendment, to at least reach some type of common ground. At least on this little bit we were hoping to find unanimous agreement to proceed on the study.
This amendment isn't trying to gut the original motion. We're not trying to eliminate it. We're saying that we will proceed with your goal, but we would like to have confidence in you. We would like to build that trust and co-operate, but with the knowledge that you will not force this upon us. We can talk, we can debate, but that does not mean that we somehow agree—yet. Perhaps we'll come to an agreement later on.
There is another reference I want to make. It is to Charles Edward Selwyn Franks, a constituent of Mr. Milliken, a good friend of his, a former professor of his, who wrote a book called The Parliament of Canada. On page 5 it says this:
There are two further functions of parliament which are so important that they deserve to be identified in their own right, though they might also be subsumed under the general rubric of making a government work.
This is related to the efficiency argument that the government is making.
The first of these is the function of parliament as a recruiting and training ground for political leaders; the second is the function of political communication, where the processes of Parliamentary discussion, in Bagehot's terms, express the mind of the people, teach society, and inform both government and citizen of grievances and problems.
How will we be able to debate those things and get to the grievances and problems, to, in his view, teach society and inform both government and citizens, if we don't have substantive debate at the committee stage, since we don't have it all the time in the House of Commons? The mechanisms the government can use to proceed with time allocation reduce debate. This is the place where parliamentarians used to debate all the issues, used to propose all the amendments, used to go into committee of the whole to propose amendments there. Yes, it was a very difficult process. It was perhaps inefficient, but it was effective in ensuring that parliamentarians had full capacity to represent their constituencies.
Mr. Milliken went on to state:
Governments resent oppositions that look like a government in waiting because it is perceived that all the weaknesses of the government are shown up by a skilful and competent opposition.
I would hope that Canadians, in general, have found our caucuses, both New Democrats and Conservatives, to be skilful opposition. I hope the government recognizes us as that, and not obstructionist, not out to unnecessarily impede, but to skilfully demonstrate a point, which is that you have to seek unanimous agreement to change the rules of how this House works before you proceed with a study. If we can reach agreement on the amendment, then we can proceed with the study. I think that's been plainly evident.
I'm looking at my outline here and I've gone through about four of the points. I have two left to do. I see Mr. Simms giving me a thumbs-up. He's quite pleased. Eventually, the floor will return to him, but just not yet. I have a few more points to make.
Mr. Milliken went on, saying:
I will read from page 5 of the little work: “On the Role of an Opposition”.
This was something Mr. Milliken wanted to deal with, and he had been interrupted several times by other members.
He read;
Only a strong and alert opposition can hope to check and control the excessive control powers contrary to the Constitution that may be assumed or conferred upon governmental administration, the so-called bureaucracy.
Only an alert opposition can prevent the short-cuts through democratic procedures that cabinet ministers and bureaucrats frequently find attractive. It is only the opposition, functioning as a recognized part of parliamentary proceedings, that stands opposed to the degeneration of the governmental system into a form of arbitrary direction of public affairs by the executive and the bureaucracy.
I won't continue the quote.
The Standing Orders enable us to do these things. We are part of the parliamentary process. Part of proposing a bill should be considering how the opposition will react: whether there will be reasoned debate, whether it will pull the plug and obstruct everything, or whether it will say, “You are the government. You have the right. You have the mandate from the people to move forward with a piece of legislation, and you have recognized our right to oppose” within the rules that we have now.
If you choose to change the rules—and as members have said and members of the government caucus have said, you have a mandate to make this place more efficient and modernized, though I don't like the term “modernize”—I hope you will consider that we too still have a role to play here in these proceedings, at committee and in the House, through motions and, at times, dilatory motions or debatable motions or motions on committee reports. We have a role to play with you and we hope you will consider our viewpoints as well. However, unless you pass this amendment, we don't have faith that this will actually happen, because you can outvote us at this committee and you can have your way. There's just so little trust right now that we can't proceed on the basis of faith alone.
Later on Mr. Milliken made the point about 1969. I've had a very difficult time finding the Debates from the time and actually reading them all.
Mr. Milliken said:
The government finally used closure to get these rules through, after 12 days of debate. After 12 days of debate. I want to point that out to the parliamentary secretary. I can assure him that if closure is applied on this debate, he will hear about the 12 days of debate that went on in 1969. We are quite prepared to debate these for 12 days, I can assure the hon. member.
He was interrupted later on, but he was making a point that in 1969, again, the government of the day pushed through changes on the Standing Orders within 12 days, without that consent from everybody.
Parliament shouldn't be turning out legislation in quantity. My answer and the answer of many others has been that the mission of Parliament is freedom and the assurance that all the people shall receive justice. We're not a slot machine into which we drop a piece of legislation and then spin, hopefully not for no reason, and then a slug drops out at the end, and the legislation becomes law. We're not a slot machine. That's not what we're here for. You can't program this as you can a slot machine.
We're supposed to have open debate. We've chosen, I believe unfortunately, to move this from the House of Commons floor to the committee stage. We don't know how it will finish on June 2. We don't know what will be in this report, which is why we're asking for protection. This amendment is about protecting us. We're asking for protection. The weaker party is asking the stronger party, the government caucus, for protection, for certainty that it will not try to turn us into a slot machine as parliamentarians. That's all we're asking for.
I think it's a very reasoned debate.
I won't reference Mr. Milliken anymore. I'll put away the rest of his speech, but I highly recommend that members take a look at the debates in 1991 and his specific commentaries. Again, he was a member of the Liberal caucus at the time. He became Speaker, so I think he speaks from a position of experience and judgment, and he's also someone who actually studied the Standing Orders and has a deep appreciation for the traditions of this House.
Another member, David Berger from Saint-Henri—Westmount, quoted from the McGrath report:
We must strengthen the role of the House of Commons, and the key to restoring confidence in our central democratic institution is to enhance the involvement of the private member of Parliament in a number of areas.
He was talking about enhancing, but I can't tell whether many of these changes are enhancements for individual members or enhancements for the government. The two get confounded quite often, because what's efficient for an individual member is not necessarily efficient for the government. Having more deliberate debate is not efficient for the government. It says that slows it down. It wants us to be a slot machine. It wants to put in a piece of legislation, process it through, and then get it out the door within a fixed amount of time. It wants certainty.
Individual parliamentarians should say they can't give it that certainty. They need to consider this. They need to go back to their constituents and they need to go back to their caucus and they need to think about it. It's like buying a car: you're not going to buy it the first time you see it. The first time a piece of legislation is proposed, I may hum and haw. I will take weeks to consider it. I would hope people wouldn't buy vehicles based on an ad and then just walk into a dealership and buy the first Tesla they see, although I hear in Ontario you can get a heck of a rebate for one.
This particular parliamentarian then went on, and he was speaking to amendments to the Standing Orders, exactly the same thing that could potentially happen later on if this report becomes part of a government motion to amend the Standing Orders. He talked about question period. I have commented that question period is the one time of the day and during the week when we can uncover weaknesses in the government and disagreements, perhaps, with government policy.
He says that in the parliamentary system it's the government's responsibility to present a legislative agenda. We mentioned this before, but the agenda comes from the government. We don't disagree with that on this side. We accept the fact that the government will be setting the agenda, and it won't be us.
That's why the example in the reform to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons referencing the U.S. House of Representatives is just so odd. It's because in there, there is no government to represent. Every member proposes bills and pushes bills forward. Majority leaders debate among themselves and then figure out agreement on things.
I'll mention one more. The member for Saint-Léonard, Mr. Alfonso Gagliano, was a respected cabinet minister, a long-serving member with much experience to bring to debates.
I have tried to reference experienced members of the House who were Liberal caucus members to demonstrate the viewpoints that existed then. I value all members regardless of their political affiliation, but to me experienced members bring a thoughtfulness that takes time to accumulate. Mr. Gagliano had this quote:
A fundamental aspect of the principles on which the financial procedures of Parliament are based is that Parliament does not grant supply before the Opposition has had the opportunity to show why it should be refused.
So we don't say yes before we say no. All we're asking is this opportunity. Say yes to us, and then we can debate on the rest. Perhaps we'll say no, but we could say yes too. You can't automatically assume that our side will say no to any changes, because we've expressed an interest in considering changes. Different members have expressed different ideas. I hope I've contributed some ideas as well, ideas that I think would be interesting to study, although not to implement immediately, because they deserve some study.
I have just this last quotation here, again from Mr. Gagliano:
The role of an opposition party in a parliamentary system is to make the process more democratic by forcing the government of the day to be accountable.
The goal is to render passage of laws inefficient because of that need for accountability. It will slow things down, but it's a two-way street. One person's red tape is another person's accountability measure. Requiring a longer administrative form is meant in some way to fulfill a requirement to collect information and to assure yourself that the money is being spent in the proper fashion. One person will call it red tape. Another person will call it accountability and want you to show them the way you spend.
I am getting closer to the end, which I'm sure members will cheer.
There is a reference to the House of Representatives here—